iNEWSPAPER.me

Jon Sidener — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 13:00:28 +0000

Rudy. More than a sports movie cliche. Or less. http://bit.ly/uSuxGk

About

Jon Sidener — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:35:25 +0000

elcome to iNewspaper.me, the somewhat experimental online home of Jonathan Sidener, a long-time newspaper journalist turned entrepreneur wannabe/ part time blogger and freelance writer.

Over the years at The San Diego Union-Tribune, The Arizona Republic and The Philadelphia Inquirer, I wrote for just about every section of the newspaper, News, Business, Food, Sports, Science, Consumer Tech, Travel. It occured to me that if I wrote about the various things that interest me and put them together in one site I’d have a slowly evolving newspaper-like experience.

Unlike a blog, the Home page is organized by topic, not chronology, so the most recent post is not necessarily at the top of the page. Shorter items will appear in the area I am creatively calling “Blog” in the lower right corner of the homepage.

I’m spending a lot of time in China these days, so there will be a lot here about the world’s most populous country, some of which will be filed under “Travel” or “Food.” I spent my last 10 years in newspapers writing about consumer tech in San Diego and Phoenix, so I’ll keep my hand in on that topic. I’ll add categories as I go.

Again, welcome. Have a look around. Come back anytime.

Jonathan Sidener

Everyman’s encyclopedia

Jon Sidener — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 18:55:42 +0000

I love Wikipedia.
Like a massive sponge, it keeps soaking up the collective knowledge of the world — primarily the English speaking Western world, but that’s not a bad place to start. In about a decade it’s grown to a scope and depth that put it in a league with the Library of Congress. And Wikipedia impacts far more people on a given day.
But that’s not why I love it.
I set out to write about my return to the low-carb lifestyle after a year-long vacation in bread and chocolate-truffle land. I wasn’t thinking about Wikipedia.
I went back to a blog I’ve started reading, Hyperlipid, a smart, research-based look at nutrition and the body’s mechanisms for getting fat and getting not-fat.
I got sidetracked by Hyperlipid’s link to a second smart and science-infused blog, which makes references to something new to me, the “Paleo” diet.
So I ended up on the Wikipedia “Paleo diet” page, a digression on top of a sidetrack. The Paleo diet turns out not to be new. It’s the idea of eating based on a pre-agrarian diet. Eat what our hunter-gatherer ancestors did before they discovered farming because that’s what our genes expect. No grain. No sugar. No dairy.
I skimmed the page, thinking that I should get back to my original task when two words jumped out at me: “Fad diet.”
Everyone has buttons that can be pushed. I like to think I have less than most. Early in my career I had a dictionary-throwing, profanity screaming, man-hating editor who nicknamed me Lake Placid because I responded to her with a blank stare, as long as she missed when she heaved the dictionary.
Over time, a lot of things can come to fester in the back of the mind. Particularly if you’re not one to throw dictionaries and scream profanities in the workplace.
For 10 years, I lost weight on the low-carb regimen and kept it off, while watching fellow journalists print and broadcast unchallenged nonsense.
At one newspaper where I worked, we ran a wire-service article about low-carb diets and some reporter was assigned to “localize” the story. She called the health department and ended up with the county dietician. Who knew the county needed a dietician?
The reporter came away with a quote that echoed the story’s negative tone. The dietician said that low-carb diets are bad because they suppress insulin, which helps the body store energy.
I am not an expert. I am not a physiologist. But “storing energy?” And how exactly does the body store energy? As fat. So the dietician’s argument is that low-carb diets are bad because they impair insulin, which helps us makes us fat. Silly me. I thought the point of a diet was to impair and reverse the body’s storage of “energy.”
After that, I started noticing a lot more pseudo science coming from the nutritional community, particularly a lot of Atkins’ opponents slinging the “F” word: Fad.
A fad is something that comes and goes. Atkins created awareness of the low-carb diet in the 1970s and kept it alive for four decades. Hardly a fad.
All of the above went through my mind in the time it took me to move the cursor and click on the link to Wikipedia’s Fad Diet page. It was a detour atop a digression, which was already compounding a sidetrack. But what are you going to do once your buttons are pushed?
Speaking of buttons, Wikipedia has this thing called an edit button. If you have some half truth stuck in your craw, it’s a pretty good way to get unstuck. Two hours later, the Fad Diet page reflected that the term has been co-opted by the low-calorie camp to imply that low-carb diets are unscientific, along with anything else not mainstream nutritional orthodoxy. The article now points out that most fads are shorter than four decades. I cited a Journal of the American Medical Association article to refute the “unscientific” charge.
It was satisfying, maybe even cathartic. I got my craw back. I love Wikipedia.

Cheesesteak crisis

Jon Sidener — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 02:23:04 +0000

Thomas Wolf wasn’t writing about Philly, but he was right. You can’t go home again, at least not if you’re hoping to find the culinary Mecca of your youth.
I grew up in the land of cheesesteaks. They served them in my high school cafeteria, not to mention every pizza joint in South Jersey or across the river in the City of Brotherly Love. The cafeteria version was pretty bad. Grumbling matrons in hair nets put down their cigarettes long enough to slap overcooked minute steaks with un-melted cheese onto steak rolls. It was a half-hearted effort at best.
But the pizzerias dished up the real thing.
I used to watch the guys working the grill in the back. Generally they spoke Italian, not English. They’d throw diced onions, peppers and mushroom slices on the big metal rectangle and spoon a little vegetable oil on top. They’d toss the toppings a couple of times with a metal spatula and cover with a big domed lid.
After a head start for the toppings, they’d throw the steaks on the grill. In a minute, they’d flip the steaks and lift the lid and pamper the toppings. Then they’d take the spatula, or two, and chop and shred the sizzling meat. Cheese went on top the shards of glistening beef. The lid moved from the toppings to the main course to speed the melting of the cheese.
In some places, they toasted the freshly sliced rolls on the grill for a minute and then used the bread like a tent over the steak to melt the cheese.
When a guy was making five or six steaks at the same time, he was like Lionel Hampton on the xylophone, moving up and down the grill, lifting lids, flipping onions, dropping the clanging lid back on the cast iron grill, chopping meat with a staccato beat.
At just the right moment, the semi-molten epicurean delight was loaded onto Italian bread, typically half a hoagie roll. Some places served the dairy side down, enabling the cheese to meld with the bread, which made them easier to eat. Others served them cheese up, which looks better — never underestimate the importance of presentation — but can lead the cheese to stick the paper wrapper or slide off the sandwich while you eat.
All the variations were great. In our little burg on the banks of the Delaware, you couldn’t get away with mediocre food.
I got some insight into the whole process when my sleepy little town got some ink in the Burlington County Times. My favorite pizza place was on the list of establishments raided by the feds in a money-laundering, undocumented workers and numbers-running investigation. Say what you want about the mob. Yeah, they kill and maim people, sell drugs and promote prostitution. But they know how make good pizza and cheesesteaks.
Not like today. I’m not sure what the problem is, but a superb cheesesteak is no longer a sure thing in the Delaware Valley. Maybe I’ve over romanticized my memories of cheesesteaks past. Maybe the real Italian bakers have retired or sold out to corporations who let the focus groups into the kitchen. Perhaps the RICO act put the steakeries under new, law-abiding management. Or perhaps, to paraphrase former Pa. Gov. Ed Rendell, it’s the “wussification” of the American taste bud.
For starters, the rolls don’t seem the same crusty breads of my youth. It’s like Wonderbread snuck into the bakeries at night and switched recipes. If I wanted a steak on a spongy hot dog roll, I’d have stayed in Arizona.
Not long after I came back East, I went to Geno’s Steaks in South Philly, mainly because I was in the neighborhood and because John Madden always raved about it. There was a line, which seemed like a good sign. In retrospect, McDonalds often has a line too. Instead of a guy working the grill like a xylophone, there was a fat guy standing over a pile of pre-cooked meat which sat on the grill drying out like food in a cheap Vegas buffet. To hide the fact that the meat isn’t hot enough to melt cheese, they use pre-warmed cheese-whiz.
And it’s not just Geno’s. I went to an acclaimed steakery in the Roxborough section of Philly. They also featured a guy standing over a mound of pre-cooked beef. And the rolls had that same too-soft quality. Steak rolls are supposed to have a little bite, a little crust that holds up to the steaming cheese and beef. There are really only two ways to elevate a steak above the junk they serve in San Diego, Des Moines and Dallas. The bread and the skill to cook the meat just right. I don’t know what’s happened to the steak roll while I was away, but it’s not the same.
Neither are the cooks. If you’re going to pre-cook the meat, you might as well hang up a sign saying you don’t give a damn. They’re called minute steaks for crying out loud. That’s because they only take a minute to cook. And they’re at their best exactly at the end of that minute when they’re shoveled still sizzling into the roll. Not 20 minutes later. Does it say 20-minute steaks on the box? No. Does it say to let them cool off and then cover with melted cheese product using a stick designed to stir paint? No.
This is how Detroit lost the automotive industry. They took a great product and started to nickel and dime the consumers. Some day Toyota or Volkswagen is going to come to South Philly and start selling imported cheesesteaks. And all the Americans behind the steak counters will be out of work. The economy will tank. It’ll be just like Detroit. And it never would have happened when Angelo Bruno ran the city. Sure they called him the “Gentle Don” but you would have been sifting through the ashes of your sandwich shop if you’d served him a disappointing steak. Actually he would have owned a piece of your sandwich shop and run numbers out of the back, but that’s not the point.
If I have to eat disappointing cheesesteaks and shovel snow I’m going to move back to Phoenix or San Diego. It just doesn’t make sense. Why anybody would live here?

Jon Sidener — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:15:38 +0000

NOT SAYING IT’S GOOD: An interesting idea: Made in #China as a luxury label.
http://bbc.in/uBcuRI

Jon Sidener — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 20:22:10 +0000

SUPER GIRL dies, reincarnates as Super Housewife in #China http://bit.ly/pgZYy8

Jon Sidener — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 20:10:54 +0000

IT’S ON THE NET so it must be true: Eel enters man’s penis during spa beauty treatment in #China http://bit.ly/ptbX48

Love the gadget, hate the gadget maker

Jon Sidener — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 19:15:31 +0000

Sometimes the big tech companies seem to compete to see who can alienate consumers the most. Google, which everyone used to love, launched its Nexus One phone without bothering to hire any customer service reps. That didn’t go over so well when the inevitable problems arose.

About the time it got done wiping the egg of its face from Nexus One, Google angered other consumers with the launch of its Buzz social networking add-on to Gmail. Google took the liberty of browsing through Gmail users’ “Sent” folder and started sharing user information with anyone it decided to add to the social network. Google issued several public apologies and changed some of Buzz’ features after a class action lawsuit and uproar from Gmail users.

Apple has a legendary core of loyal customers. But the company faces a growing chorus of complaints about customer service from the owners of faulty iPods and Macs. Last summer, the company took anti-consumer behavior to a low when it tried to silence a British man as a condition for refunding the purchase price of an iPod that had exploded.

When it comes to torquing off the customers, it’s hard to beat Microsoft. A growing number of consumers have decided to pay inflated prices to buy Apple computers because they dislike Microsoft, its products and its customer service.

After a recent hassle streaming Netflix movies to my TV via Microsoft’s Xbox 360. I was ready to add one more item on the “Why People Hate Microsoft” list. But after looking at everything in the light of day, I’m nominating Netflix to the list of companies that want to be hated as much as Microsoft.

This latest run in started when a major craving for noir hit me. Netflix told me that all I needed was a compatible hardware device such as the Xbox 360 and I’d be watching Bogart in “Dead Reckoning” on the big living room flat screen in minutes. I signed up, fired up the Xbox, downloaded the Netflix software and …

Instead of Bogie as a returning war hero, I got a message from Xbox Live that my Gold subscription had expired and I’d have to renew to watch Netflix movies on my TV.

I can download Amazon Unbox movies from my PC and stream them to the living room TV through Windows Media Center and the 360. I can record TV shows on my PC and stream them through the Microsoft game console. I can watch live programming on my PC’s TV tuner and stream it through the Xbox. But Microsoft has crippled Xbox Live and Media Center to prevent me from streaming Netflix unless I sign up for a premium subscription.

Crippled technology — when a company sells you hardware with some of its features intentionally disabled — bites. Microsoft is not the first company to do it. For years cell phone carriers have turned off features that would bypass revenue-generating data fees. Sony’s Blu-Ray has the ability to cripple the output of high-def movies on older HDTVs as part of a digital rights management scheme. But that doesn’t make Microsoft’s disabling of the 360 any less of a slap in the face to people like me who bought the gaming console but don’t want to pay for a subscription to the online gaming service.

I went back and looked at Microsoft’s original announcement. They were clear that the Netflix feature — an exclusive at the time — was limited to paid subscribers. Since then Sony has begun offering a similar feature on its PlayStation 3 and Nintendo has announced a similar service for its Wii, coming this spring. Both of the competitors offer Netflix delivery for free.

So I guess Microsoft’s off the hook. It’s a relatively free country. Maybe they’re making a good business decision. Maybe they’re making a bad marketing decision. But I’m left watching Netflix movies on my 20-inch desktop monitor.

Instead of sprawling on my big ol’ comfy couch, I’m getting a crick in my neck from trying to put my feet up at my desk while watching movies halfway over my shoulder. I have to blame someone.

What about Netflix? I went back and looked at the company’s website to read their marketing info carefully. Here’s what it says:

“First connect your Netflix ready device to the Internet via an Ethernet cable (or Wi-Fi, if you have it.) Then plug it into your TV. Now you’re ready to select movies on your TV and watch instantly.”

The web page shows three “Netflix ready devices” and there’s a picture of my 360.

Not far away, I found my favorite line: “There’s no additional fee — it’s included in your membership.”

I scrolled down the page. I was informed that the “Xbox 360 is the total entertainment experience” and I could “watch thousands of HD movies and TV episodes at the press of a button including titles streamed instantly from Netflix.” There was still no mention of the hidden fee.

Finally on another page I was told that I would need a

iSlate vs. Kindle: Mobile screen smackdown

Jon Sidener — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 18:55:28 +0000

The Apple enthusiast community — cult is such an ugly word — buzzes louder every day anticipating the unveiling of a shiny new amulet. We won’t know exactly what it is until Steve Jobs finishes his conversation with the burning bush and descends from the mountain. But the soothsayers in the valley below have been busy casting yarrow stalks and reading tea leaves. “He who is called Jobs will unveil a tablet computer called the iSlate,” they say: “It will be bigger than an iPhone and smaller than a MacBook. It will revolutionize the way people read books and magazines and watch movies.” “All hail He-who-is-called-Jobs,” the community chants.
The soothsayers are generally wrong. None predicted that the iPhone would be feature a big touch screen on its face and little else. Not one expected that it would be a device more for mobile Web browsing than for making phone calls. This time around these guys seem to forget that there’s already a device changing the way we read books and magazines. It’s called the Amazon Kindle. But even if they’re half right, it should be interesting.

When Jobs came down from the mountain with the iPod, Apple entered a virtually unexploited market. There were dozens of MP3 players, but none had captured consumers’ hearts. When he unveiled the iPhone, it was a similar situation. Smartphones were just a niche segment of the cell phone world.

An iSlate would face different conditions. The ground is well plowed. The Kindle had a breakout holiday season. Amazon says the device out sold the trendy Zhu Zhu hamsters and all other single products on its site for the holiday season. The online retailer doesn’t provide any sales figures to back the claim, but the Kindle has become the leader of the e-reader pack.

And there is a pack. Before the holidays, Sony launched a new version of its Reader, which promptly sold out. Barnes & Noble joined the market with its Nook device, which also quickly sold out. At the Consumer Electronics Show at the beginning of the month, manufacturers took the wraps off several e-reader competitors, including two with big 11-inch displays, the Skiff from publisher Hearst and the Que from startup Plastic Logic.

Assessing the Kindle against the rumored iSlate is a bit like comparing Apples to things that are not Apples. An iSlate would likely do more than any e-reader, playing music, displaying videos and photos and perhaps providing GPS navigation. The e-readers are optimized to master one task, displaying text.

There’s been a lot of noise about the iPhone as an e-reader, but I don’t know any iPhone owners who have actually read a book on theirs. The screen is too small, like all LCD displays it has glare and it uses too much power.

The rumored 10.1 inch screen would solve the size issue, but compound the power consumption problem. Another rumor says it will use more energy-efficient, state-of-the-art OLED technology. That would be cool, but would raise the price to around $2,000.

The Kindle and other e-readers use technologies often described as electronic paper. They are reflective displays, which means they bounce sunlight or interior lighting to your eyeballs. In part because they don’t emit light, they have phenomenal battery lives. You could read War and Peace without recharging an electronic paper device.

It’s possible, even probable, that the Kindle and iSlate will both succeed. But still the devices would be competitors. The optimal size for a portable device when it’s not in use is roughly equal to the dimensions of the typical pants pocket. Convincing consumers to part with hundreds of dollars for a mobile device too big to fit in a pocket is a challenge. Getting them to buy more than one is generally not going to happen.

With Apple’s loyal fan base, an iSlate can be expected to sell well no matter what features it includes and what price it goes for. A few tech writers have already predicted that the iSlate will slay the Kindle. I doubt it. I think the fatal flaw of all e-readers is that they are designed to deliver text in a world where each day fewer people sit down to read.

Jon Sidener — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 18:33:16 +0000

NFL IN THE AIR Got my Eagles schedule downloaded to my Google calendar, which means it immediately synched to my phone, which in turn means that when someone asks who they’re playing next week, I’ll have the info at my fingertips. Thank God technology is keeping pace with my memory decline. Have to look for some NFL-related apps today.